A critique of Marx's Labour Theory of Value and its applicability in the age of cybernetic technologies

Management

Speaker:

Christopher Land, University of Warwick

Date:

Friday 18 May 2001

Time:

14:00

Location:

Peter Chalk Centre, Room 1.1/2/3

Further details

This paper raises the spectre of Marx's 'labour theory of value' and asks the question of whether we can continue to anthropocentrically posit dead-labour as the ghost in the machine of productive technologies. After making an argument for the importance of the much neglected question of value within organization theory, the paper rehearses the key points of Marx's theory and considers Roy Jacques' recent critique from the perspective of knowledge management. Although Jacques' argument does not stand up to a rigorous reading of Marx, his questioning of the value of technology reflects a similar line of enquiry to that pursued by Deleuze and Guattari. By allowing for the possibility of a 'machinic surplus-value' the paper concludes by considering whether the analytical impossibility of separating anthropomorphic surplus-value from transhuman machineries necessitates a total reformulation of the critical revolutionary project.